Charged particle beam apparatuses have many functions in a plurality of industrial fields, including, but not limited to, inspection of semiconductor devices during manufacturing, testing systems, imaging systems, detecting devices, and exposure systems for lithography. Thus, there is a high demand for use of charged particle beam devices for structuring and inspecting specimen within the micrometer and nanometer scale.
Examples of charged particle beam devices are electron microscopes, electron beam pattern generators, ion microscopes as well as ion beam pattern generators. Charged particle beams, in particular ion beams, offer superior spatial resolution compared to photon beams, due to their short wavelengths.
Gas field ion sources for particle microscopes and other particle devices promise an increase in resolution over state-of-the-art charged particle sources. Accordingly, gas field ion sources are promising for use in very high-resolution applications. In order to enable very high resolutions, a variety of system requirements have to be considered.
When microscopes based on gas field ion sources or other charged particle sources are to be used in commercial applications, reliable and automated procedures for maintenance are needed. This applies, for example, to cleaning, rebuilding, and/or building of the emitter tip in the charged particle beam device.